Thursday, November 20, 2014

FIXING CONGRESS

Now that the Republicans have
won the Congress, perhaps the mainstream media will allow itself to focus on
needed constitutional reforms.

There are three main
proposals that are usually advanced to reform our national legislature.

1)Do something
about campaign financing. This usually takes the form of: a) prohibiting all
private campaign funding and requiring the government to finance campaigns; b)
prohibiting certain kinds or amounts of campaign expenditures; or c) specifying
who can or cannot finance campaigns.

2)Enact term limits
by constitutional amendment.

3) Increase
the size of the House, shrink the districts, prohibit gerrymandering and
decrease the expenses and emoluments of Congress persons.

Personally, I favor the thirdapproach. Public financing of political
campaigns is a frightfully bad idea. Public funding is controlled by the
government and the government is controlled by the incumbents. It follows that
public funding of elections, controlled by incumbents will absolutely favor
incumbents. Giving that kind of an advantage to career politicians is hardly
the way to discourage career politicians.

I am, at best; ambivalent with respect to term limits.
We have them for some offices and the evaluations are mixed. The main argument against
term limits is that they deny the people the right to elect the representatives
they want. My concern, frankly, is that term limits don’t address the real
problems. You will still have career politicians, albeit ladder climbers rather
than lifelong incumbents. You will still have interminable fund raising,
expensive campaigns, cozy lobbyists, and all the shenanigans that besmirch our
system today.

Moreover, term limits tend to exacerbate the career
path of legislator-to-lobbyist that already makes our Congress seem like a post
graduate course in representing supplicants at the public teat.

The third approach appeals to me as the soundest. The
Founders intended the House of representatives to be reapportioned every ten
years to reflect the increase in the nation’s population. Because the ratio of
representatives to constituents was not specifically written into the
constitution, Congress was able to freeze the number of representatives, thus
increasing the power of their offices every ten years.

Today, Congressmen represent an average of 710,000
people. Campaigns are expensive. That is why so many incumbents are reelected.
Gerrymandered districts assure that one or the other of the two major political
parties has a “safe” district.

Most importantly, Representatives do not reflect the
sense of local communities. Districts which are not community-based foster
appeals to the lowest common denominator of voter sentiment, typically
evidenced by partisan affiliation, ethnicity or economic bias.

Large districts lead to full time legislators, large
professional staffs, and centralized operations. The part time legislator who
lives in his or her district and personally reads and studies Bills does not
exist inexpansive and expensive
constituencies.

At a minimum, we ought to eliminate gerrymandering and
require Congresspersons to live in their districts. As now written, the
Constitution only requires members of the House to be residents of their State.
In truth, most do not actually live in their ‘home’ state, since their
principal place of residence is Washington D.C. A vacation home or a campaign
headquarters should not satisfy the requirement of residence.

There is much more to be said and written on this
subject, to be sure. That’s why we need a convention.

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